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TRIBUNE TRACTS. -No. 3. 



The Admission of Kansas. 



SPEECH 

OP 

WILLIAM II. SEWAED, 

'I 

OF N'JSW YOEIC, 
DELIVERED IN" THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, FEB. 29, 1860 



Tlie Senate, in pursuance of its special order, 
took up the bill introduced on the 22d inst. bv 
Mr. Skwakd, of New York, to admit the State of 
Kansas into the Union, under the Constitution 
framed, and with the boundaries prescribed by the 
Convention, which assembled at Wyandot last July, 
and Mr. Sewabd opened the debate aa follows : 

Me. Pp.esidkxt : 

The admission of Kansas into the Union, 
witliout farther delay, seems to me equally 
necessary, just and wise. In recorded de- 
bates I have already anticipated the argu- 
ments for this conclusion. 

In coming forward among the political as- 
trologers, it shall be an error of judgment, 
and not of disposition, if my interpretation of 
the feverish dreams which are disturbing the 
country .shall tend to foment, rather tlian to 
allay, the national excitement. I shall say 
nothing unnecessarily of persons, because, in 
our system, the public welfare and happiness 
depend chiefly on institutions, and very little 
on men. I shall allude but briefly to inci- 
dental topics, because tliey are ciihemeral, 
and because, even in the midst of appeals to 
passion and prejudice, it is always safe to 
submit solid truth to the deliberate consider- 
ation of an honest and elightoned people. 

It will bo an overflowing source of shame, 



as well as of sorrow, if we, thirty millions — 
Europeans by extraction, Americans by birth 
or discipline, and Christians in faith, and 
meaning to be such in practice — cannot so 
combine prudence with humanity, in our con- 
duct concerning the one disturbing subject of 
slavery, as not only to preserve our un- 
equalled institutions of freedom, but also to 
enjoy their benefits with contentment and 
harmony. 

Wherever a guiltless slave exists, be he 
Caucasian, American, Malay, or African, ho 
is the subject of two distinct and opposite 
ideas — one that ho is wrongly, the other that 
he is rightly a slave. The balance of numbers 
on either side, however great, never com- 
pletely extinguishes this difference of opinion, 
for there are always some defenders of slave- 
ry outside, even if there are none inside of a 
free State, while also there arc always out- 
side, if there are not inside of every slavo 
State, many who assert with Milton, that " no 
man who knows aught can be so stupid as to 
deny that all men naturally were born free, 
being the image and resemblance of God him- 
self, and were by privilege above all tho crea- 
tures, born to command and not to obey." H 
often, perhaps generally liappen.s, however, 



C^" Fob Sale at the Office or the New York Tribune. Price, per Single Copt, 4o. 
Dozen Copies, 25o. ; per Hundred, $1 25; pkk Thousand, $10. 



^r57^ 



that in considering the subject of slavery, so- 
ciety seems to overlook the natural right, or 
personal interest of the slave himself, and to 
act exclusively for the welfare of the citizen. 
But this fact does not materially affect ulti- 
mate results, for the elementary question of 
the rightfulness or wrongfulness of slavery in- 
heres in every form that discussion concern- 
ing it assumes. "What is just to one class of 
men can never he injurious to any otlier; and 
what is unjust to any condition of persons in 
a State, is necessarily injurious in some degree 
to the whole community. An economical 
question early arises out of the subject of 
slavery — labor either of freemen or of slaves 
is the cardinal necessity of society. Some 
States choose the one kind, some the other. 
Hence two municipal systems widely different 
arise. The slave State strikes down and af- 
fects to extinguish the personality of the la- 
borer, not only as a member of the political 
body, but also as a parent, husband, child, 
neighbor, or friend. He thus becomes, in a 
political view, merely property, without moral 
capacity, and without domestic, moral and 
social relations, duties, rights and remedies — 
a chattel, an object of bargain, sale, gift, inhe- 
ritance, or theft. His earnings are compen- 
sated and his wrongs atoned, not to himself, 
but to his owner. The State protects not the 
slave as a man, but the capital of another man, 
which he represents. On the other hand, the 
State wliich rejects slavery encourages and 
animates and invigorates the laborer by main- 
taining and developing his natural personality 
in all the rights and faculties of manhood, and 
generally with the privileges of citizenship. 
In the one case capital invested in slaves be- 
comes a great political force, while in the 
other, labor thus elevated and enfranchised, 
becomes the dominating political power. It 
thus happens that we may, for convenience 
sake, and not inaccurately, call slave States 
capital States, and free States labor States. 

So soon as a State feels the impulse of com- 
merce or enterprise or ambition, its citizens 
begin to study the effects of these systems of 
capital and labor respectively on its intelli- 
gence, its virtue, its tranquillity, its integrity 
or unity, its defense, its prosperity, its liberty, 
its happiness, its aggrandizement, and its fame. 
In other words, the great question arises, whe- 
tlier slavery is a moral, social, and political 
good, or a moral, social, and political evil. 



This is the slavery question at home. But 
there is a mutual bond of unity and brother- 
hood between man and man throughout the 
world. Kations examine freely the political 
systems of each other, and of all preceding 
times, and accordingly as they approve or dis- 
approve of the two systems of capital and 
labor respectively they sanction and prose- 
cute, or condemn and prohibit commerce in 
men. Thus, in one way or in another, the 
slavery question which so many amongst us, 
who are more willing to rnle tlian patient in 
studying the conditions of society, think is a 
merely accidental or unnecessary question that 
might and ought to be settled and dismissed 
at once, is, on the contrary, a world-wide and 
enduring subject of political consideration and 
civil administration. Men, states, and nations 
entertain it, not voluntarily, but because the 
progress of society continually brings it into 
their way. They divide upon it, not per- 
versely, but because owing to differences of 
constitution, condition, or cu-cumstances, they 
cannot agree. 

The fathers of the Republic encountered it. ' 
They even adjusted it so that it might have 
given us much less than our present disquiet, 
had not circumstances afterwards occurred 
which they, wise as they were, had not clearly 
foreseen. Although they had inherited, yet 
they generally condemned the practice of sla- 
very and hoped for its discontinuance. They 
expressed this when they asserted in the De- 
claration of Independence, as a fundamental 
principle of American society, that all men 
are created equal, and have .inalienable rights 
to life, liberty, and tlie pursuit of happiness. 
Each state, however, reserved to itself exclu- 
sive political power over the subject of sla- 
very within its own borders. Nevertheless, 
it unavoidably presented itself in their consul- 
tations on a bond of Federal Union. The new 
Government was to be a representative one. 
Slaves were capital in some States, in others 
capital had no investments in labor. Should 
those slaves be represented as capital or aa 
persons, taxed as capital or as persons, or 
should they not bo represented or taxed at 
all ? The fathers disagreed, debated long, and 
compromised at last. Each State, they deter- 
mined, shall have two Senators in Congress. 
Three-fifths of the slaves shall be elsewhere 
represented and be taxed as persons. What 
should be done if the slave should escape into 



a labor State ? Should that State confess him 
:o be a chattel and restore him as such, or 
might it regard him as a person, and harbor 
and protect liim as a man ? They comproniisod 
again, and decided that no person held to 
labor or service in one State by the laws 
thereof, escaping into another, shall by any 
law or regulation of that State, be discharged 
from such labor or service, but shall be de- 
livered up on claim to the person to whom 
Euch labor or service shall be due. 

Free laborers would immigrate, and slaves 
might be imported into the States. The fathers 
agreed that Congress may establish uniform 
laws of naturalization, and it might prohibit 
the importation of persons after 1808. Commu- 
nities in the Southwest, detached from the 
Southern States, were growing up in the prac- 
tice of slavery, to be capital States. New 
States would soon grow up in the Northwest, 
•while as yet capital stood aloof, and labor had 
not lifted tlie axe to begin there its endless but 
benificent task. The fathers authorized Con- 
gress to make all needful rules and regulations 
conceruing the arrangements and disposition of 
the public lands, and to admit new States. So 
the Constitution, while it does not disturb or 
affect the system of capital in slaves, existing 
in any State under its own laws, does, at the 
same time, recognize every human being when 
within any exclusive sphere of Federal juris- 
diction, not as capital but as a person. 

What was the action of the fathers in Con- 
gress? They admitted the new States of the 
Southwest as capital States, because it was 
practically impossible to do otherwise, and by 
the ordinance of 1787, confirmed in 1789, 
they provided for the organization and admis- 
sion of only labor States in the Northwest. 
They directed fugitives from service to be re- 
stored not as chattels, but as persons. They 
awarded naturalization to immigrant free 
laborers, and they prohibited the trade in Af- 
rican labor. This disposition of the whole 
subject was in harmonr with the condition of 
society, and, in the main, with the spirit of the 
age. The seven Northern States contentedly 
became labor States by their own acts. The 
six Southern States, with equal tranquillity 
and by their own determination, remained 
capital States. 

The circumstances which the fathers did 
not clearly foresee were two, namely: tlie 
reiavigoration of slavery, consequent on the 



increased consumption of cotton, and the ex- 
tension of the national domain across the 
Mississippi, and these occurred before 1820. 
The State of Louisanfi, formed on a slavehold- 
ing French settlement, within the newly- 
acquired Louisianian Territory, had then 
already been admitted into the Union. There 
yet remained, however, a vast region, which 
included Arkansas and Missouri, together with 
the then unoccupied, and even unnamed Kan- 
sas and Nebraska. Arkansas, a slaveholding 
community, was nearly ready to apply, and 
Missouri, another such Territory, was actually 
applying for admission into the Federal 
Union. Tiie existing capital States seconded 
these applications, and claimed that the whole 
Louisianian Territory was rightfully open to 
slavery, and to the organization of future 
slave States. The labor States maintained 
that Congress had supreme legislative power 
within the domain, and could and ought to 
exclude slavery there. The question thus 
opened was one which related not at all to 
slavery in the existing capital States. It was 
purely and simply a national question whe- 
ther the common interest of the whole Re- 
public required that Arkansas, Missouri, 
Kansas, and Nebraska, should become capital 
States, with all the evils and dangers of 
slavery, or be labor States, with all the se- 
curity, benefits, and blessings of freedom. On 
the decision was suspended the question, as 
was thought, whether ultimately the interior 
of this new continent should be an asylum 
for the oppressed and the exile, coming year 
after year, and age after age, voluntarily from 
every otlier civilized land, as well as for the 
children of misfortune in our own, or whe- 
tlier, through the renewal of the African 
slave trade, those magnificent and luxuriant' 
regions should be surrendered to the control 
of capital, wringing out the fruit of the earcn 
through the impoverishing toil of negro 
slaves. That question of 1820 was identical- 
ly the question of 1860, so far as principle, 
and even the field of its application was con- 
cerned. Every element of the controversy 
now present entered it then ; the rightfulness 
or the wrongfulness of slavery ; its efixjcts, 
present and future ; the constitutional authori- 
ty of Congress ; the claims of the States and 
of their citizens; tlie nature of the Federal 
Union, whether it is a compact between the 
States, or an independent Government ; the 



springs of its powers, and the ligatures upon 
their exercise. All these were discussed with 
zeal and ability which have never been sur- 
passed. History tells us, I know not how 
truly, that the Union reeled under the vehe- 
mence of that great debate. Patriotism took 
counsel from prudence, and enforced a settle- 
ment which has proved to be not a final one ; 
and which, as is now seen, practically left 
open all the great political issues which were 
involved. Missouri and Arkansas were ad- 
mitted as capital States, while labor obtained, 
as a reservation, the abridged, but yet com- 
prehensive field of Kansas and Nebraska. 

Now, when the present conditions of the va- 
rious parts of the Louisianian Territory are 
observed, and we see tliat capital retains un- 
disputed possession of what it then obtained, 
while labor is convulsing the country with so 
hard and so prolonged a struggle to regain the 
lost equivalent which was tiien guaranteed to 
it under circumstances of so great solemnity, 
Ave may well desire not to be undeceived if 
the Missouri compromise was indeed unneces- 
sarily accepted by tlie free States, influenced 
by exaggerations of the dangers of disunion. 
Tiie Missouri debate disclosed truths of great 
moment for ulterior use : 

1st. That it is easy to combine the capital 
States in defence of even external interests, 
wliile it it is liard to unite tlie labor States in 
common policy. 

2d. That t!ie labor States have a natural 
loyalty to tlie Union, while the capital States 
have a natural facility for alarming that loyal- 
ty by threatening disu-iion. 

3il. Tiiat the capital states do not practical- 
ly distinguisli between legitimate and consti- 
tutional resistance to the extension of slavery 
in the common territories of the Union, and 
unconstitutional aggression against slavery es- 
tablislied l)y local laws in tlie capital States. 

The early political parties were organized 
without reference to slavery. But since 1820, 
European questions have left us practically 
unconcerned. Tliere has been a great increase 
of invention, mining, manufacture and cul- 
tivation. Steam on land and on water has 
quickened commerce. Tlie press and the telo- 
grai)h have attained prodigious activity, and 
the social intercourse between the States and 
their citizens has been immeasurably in- 
creased; and consequently their mutual rela- 
tions affecting slavery have been, for many 



years, subjects of earnest and often excited 
discussion. It is in my way only to show- 
how such disputes have operated on the 
course of political events, not to re-open them 
for argument here. There was a slave insur- 
rection in Virginia. Virginia and Kentucky 
debated, and, to the great sorrow of the freo 
States, rejected the system of voluntary labor. 
The Colonization Society was established with 
much favor in the capital States, Emancipa- 
tion societies arose in the free States. South 
Carolina instituted proceedings to nullify ob- 
noxious Federal revenue laws. Tlie capital 
States complained of courts and legislatures in 
the labor States for interpreting the constitu- 
tional provision for the surrender of fugitives 
from service so as to treat them as persons, 
and not property, and they discriminated 
against colored persons of the labor States, 
when they came to the capital States. They 
denied in Congress the right of petition, and 
embarrassed or denied freedom of debate on 
the subject of slavery. Presses, which under- 
took tlie defence of the labor system in the 
capital States, were suppressed by violence, 
and even in the labor States, public assem- 
blies, convened to consider slavery questions, 
were disjier^ed by mobs sympathizing with 
the capital States. 

The Whig party, being generally an opposi- 
tion party, i)ractised some forbearance toward 
the interest of labor. The Democratic party, 
not without demonstrations of dissent, was 
generally' found sustaining the policy of capi- 
tal. A disposition toAvards the removal of 
slavery from the presence of the national Ca- 
pitol appeared in tiie District of Columbia, 
Mr. Van Buren, a Democratic President, 
launclied a prospective veto against the antici- 
pated measure. A Democratic Congress 
brought Texas into the Union, stipulating 
practically for its future reorganization in four 
slave States. Mexico Avas incensed. "War en- 
sued. The labor States asked that the Mexi- 
can law of liberty, wiiich covered the territo- 
ries brought in by the treaty of peace, might 
remain and be confirmed. The Democratic 
party refused. The Missouri debate of 1820 
recurred noAV, under circumstances of heat 
and excitement, in relation to these conquests. 
The defenders of labor took alarm lest the 
number of neAV capital States might become 
so great as to enable that class of States to 
dictate the whole policy of the Government; 



flnd in case of constitntional resistance, tlien 
to form a now slaveholdins:: confetleracy aronnil 
tlie Gulf of Mexico. By tliis time, tlie capital 
Srates seemed to have become fixed in a de- 
termination that the Federal Government, and 
even the labor States, should recofrnize their 
slaves, tliough outside of the slave States, and 
within the territories of the United States, as 
property of which the master conld not be in 
any way or by any authority divested; and 
the labor States, having become now more es- 
sentially Democratic than ever before, by 
the great developjnent of free labor, more 
firmly tiian ever insisted on the constitutional 
doctrine tliafc slaves voluntarily carried by 
their masters into the conmion territories or 
into labor States, are persons — men. 

Under the auspicious influence of a Whig 
success, California and N"ew Mexico appeared 
before Congress as labor States. The capital 
States refused to consent to their admission 
into the Union ; and again threats of disunion 
carried terror and consternation throughout 
the land. Another compromise was made. 
Specific enactments admitted California as a 
labor State, and remanded New Mexico and 
Utah to remain Territories, with the right to 
choose freedom or slavery when ripened into 
States, while they gave new remedies for the 
recaption of fugitives from service, and abol- 
ished the open slave market in the District of 
Columbia. These new enactments, collated 
with tlie existing statutes, namely, the ordi- 
nance of 1787, the Missouri prohibitory law of 
1820, and the articles of Texas annexation, 
disposed by law of the subject of slavery in 
all the Territories of the United States. And 
so the compromise of 1850 was pronounced a 
full, final, absolnte, and cx)mprehensive settle- 
ment of all existing and all possible disputes 
concerning slavery under the Federal autho- 
rit}'. The tv\-o great parties, fearful for the 
Union, struck hands in making and in pre- 
senting this as an adjustment, never after- 
ward to be opened, disturbed, or even qnes- 
tioned, and the people accepted it by majorities 
unknown before. The new President, chosen 
over an illustrious rival, unequivocally on the 
ground of greater ability, even if not more 
reliable purpose to maintain the new treaty 
inviolate, made haste to justify this expecta- 
tion when Congress assembled. He said : 

"When the (rravo shall have closed over all who 
are now endeavoring to meet the obligationa of duty, 



the year ISjO will be recurred to as a period filled 
with anxiety aud apprehcusjoii. A successCul war 
has just terminated : peace brou, 'lit with it a great 
angraentatiou of territor.v. Disturbiiisf questions 
arose bearing upon the domestic institutiuns of a 
portion of the Confedera<\v. and involving the con- 
stitutional rights of the States. But, notwithstand- 
ing differences of opinion and sentiment, in relation 
to details and specilic provisions, the acquiescence 
of distinguished citizens, whose devotion to the 
Union can never be doubted, has given renewed 
vigor to our institutions, and restored a sense of se- 
curity and repose to the public mind throughout the 
Confederacy. Tiiat this repose is to suffer no shock 
during my oiScial term, if 1 have the power to avert 
it, those who placed me here may be assured." 

Hardly, however, had these ins[iinng sounds 
died away, throughout a reassured and de- 
lighted land, before the national repose was 
shocked again ; shocked, indeed, as it had 
never before been, and smitten this time by a 
blow from the very hand that had just re- 
leased the chords of the national harp from 
their utterance of that exalted syinphony of 
peace. 

Kansas and Xebr.oska, the long-devoted re- 
servation of labor and freedom, saved in tho 
agony of national fear in 1820, and saved 
again in the panic of 1850, were now to be 
opened by Congress, that tho never-ending 
course of seed time and harvest miglit begin. 
The slave capitalists of Missouri, from their 
own well-assured homes on the eastern banks 
of their noble river, looked down upon and 
coveted tho fertile prairies of Kansas ; while 
a sudden terror ran through all the capital 
States, when they saw a seeming certainty 
that at last a new labor State would be builfc 
on their western border, inevitably fraught, 
as they said, with a near or remote abolition 
of slavery. What could be done ? Congress 
could hardly be expected to intervene directly 
for their safety so soon after the compromise 
of 1850. The labor hive of the free States 
was distant, tho way new, unknown, and not 
without perils. Missouri was near and watch- 
ful, and held tho keys of the gates of Kansas. 
She might seize the new and smiling Territory 
by surprise, if only Congress would remove 
tho barrier established in 1820. The conjunc- 
ture was favora1)le. Clay aud Webster, the 
distinguished citizens whoso nnquestionable 
devotion to the Union was manifested bj 
their acquiescence in the compromise of 1850, 
had gone down already into their honored 
graves. The labor States had dismissed 
many of their representatives here for 
too great fidelity to freedom, and too 



6 



great distrust of the eflBcacy of that new 
bond of peace, and had replaced them -with 
partisans who were only timid, but not un- 
willing. The Democratic President and Con- 
gress hesitated, but not long. They revised 
the last great compromise, and found, with 
delighted surprise, that it was so far from 
confirming the law of freedom of 1820, that, 
on the other hand, it exactly provided for the 
abrogation of that venerated statute; nay, 
that the compromise itself actually killed the 
spirit of the Missouri law, and devolved on 
Congress the duty of removing the lifeless 
letter from the national code. The deed was 
done. The new enactment not only repealed 
the Missouri prohibition of slavery, but it pro- 
nounced the people of Kansas and Nebraska 
perfectly free to establish freedom or slavery ; 
and pledged Congress to admit them in due 
time as States, either of capital or of labor, 
into the Union. The Whig representatives of 
the capital States, in an hour of strange bewil- 
derment, concurred ; and the Whig party in- 
stantly went down, never to rise again. De- 
mocrats seceeded, and stood aloof; the country 
Avas confounded ; and, amid the perplexities 
of the hour, a Republican party was seen 
gathering itself together with much earnest- 
ness, but with little show of organization, to 
rescue if it were not now tQO late, the cause 
of freedom and labor, so unexpectedly and 
grievously imperilled in the Territories of the 
United States. 

I will not linger over the sequel. The pop- 
ular sovereignty of Kansas proved to be the 
State sovereignty of Missouri, not only in the 
persons of the rulers, but even in the letter of 
an arbitrary and cruel code. The perfect free- 
dom proved to bo a hateful and intolerable 
bondage. From 1855 to 18C0, Kansas sus- 
taincd°and encouraged only by the Republican 
party, has been engaged in successive and 
ever-varying struggles, which have taxed all 
her virtue, wisdom, moderation, energies, and 
resources, and often even her jihysical strength 
and martial courage, to save herself from 
being betrayed into the Union as a slave 
State. Nebraska, though choosing freedom, 
is, through the direct exercise of the Executive 
power, over-riding her own will, held as a 
slave Territory ; and New Mexico has relapsed 
voluntarily into the practice of slavery, from 
which she had redeemed herself while she yet 
remained a part of the Mexican Republic. 



Meantime, the Democratic party, advancing 
from the ground of popular sovereignty as far 
as that, ground is from the ordinance of 1787, 
now stands on the position that both terri- 
torial governments and Congress are incom- 
petent to legislate against slavery in the Ter- 
ritories, while they are not only competent, 
but are obliged, when it is necessary, to legis- 
late for its protection there. 

In this new and extreme position the Demo- 
cratic party now masks itself behind the bat- 
tery of the Supreme Court, as if it were pos- 
sibly a true construction of the Constitution, 
that the power of deciding practically forever 
between freedom and slavery in a portion of 
the continent far exceeding all that is yet 
organized, should be renounced by Congress, 
which alone possesses any legislative author- 
ity, and should bo assumed and exercised by a 
court which can only take cognizance of the 
great question collaterally, in a private action 
between individuals, and which action the 
Constitution will not suffer the court to enter- 
tain, if it involves twenty dollars of money, 
without the overruling intervention of a jury 
of twelve good and lawful men of the neigh- 
borhood where the litigation arises. The 
independent, ever-renewed, and ever recur- 
ring representative Parliament, Diet, Con- 
gress, or Legislature, is the one chief, para- 
mount, essential, indispensable institution in 
a Republic. Even liberty, guaranteed by 
organic law, yet if it be held by other tenure 
than the guardian care of such a representa- 
tive popular assembly, is but precariously 
maintained, while slavery, enforced by an ir- 
responsible judicial tribunal, is the completcst 
possible development of despotism. 

Mr. President, did ever the annals of any 
Government show a more rapid or more com- 
plete departure from the wisdom and virtue 
of its founders ? Did ever the Government 
of a great empire, founded on the rights of 
human labor, slide away so fast and so far, 
and moor itself so tenaciously on the basis of 
capital, and that capital invested in laboring 
men ? Did over a free representative Legis- 
lature, invested with powers so great, and 
wth the guardianship of rights so important, 
of trusts so sacred, of interests so precious, 
and of hopes at once so noble and so compre- 
hensive, surrender and renounce them all so 
unnecessarily, so unwisely, so fatally, and so 
ingloriously ? If it be true, as every mstinct 



of our nature, and every precept of political 
experience teaches us, tbat 

" III fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, 
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay." 

then -where in Ireland, in Italy, in Poland, or 
in Hungary, has any ruler prepared for a 
generous and confiding people disappoint- 
ments, disasters, and calamities equal to those 
which the Government of the United States 
holds now suspended over so large a portion 
of the continent of North America ? 

Citizens of tlie United States, in the spirit 
of this policy, subverted the free Republic of 
Nicaragua, and opened it to slavery and the 
African slave trade, and held it in that condi- 
tion waiting annexation to the United States, 
until its sovereignty was restored by a combi- 
nation of sister Republics exposed to the same 
danger, and apprehensive of similar subver- 
sion. Other citizens re-opened the foreign 
slave trade in violation of our laws and 
treaties; and, after a suspension of that 
shameful traffic for fifty years, savage Afri- 
cans have been once more landed on our 
shores and distributed, unreclaimed and with 
impunity, among our plantations. 

For this policy, so far as the Government 
has sanctioned it, the Democratic party avows 
itself responsible. Everywhere complaint 
against it is denounced, and its opponents 
proscribed. "When Kansas was writhing un- 
der the wounds of incipient, servile war, be- 
cause of her resistance, the Democratic press 
deridingly said, "let her bleed." Official 
integrity has been cause for rebuke and pun- 
ishment, when it resisted frauds designed to 
promote the extension of slavery. Through- 
out the whole Republic there is not one 
known dissenter from that policy remaining 
in place, if within the reach of the executive 
arm. Nor over the face of the whole world 
is there to be found one representative of our 
country who is not an apologist of the exten- 
sion of slavery. 

It is in America that these things have hap- 
pened. In the nineteenth century, the era of 
tlie world's greatest progress, and wliilo all 
nations but ourselves have been either abridg- 
ing or altogether suppressing commerce in 
men; at the very moment when the Russian 
serf is emancipated, and the Georgian captive, 
the Neubian prisoner, and the Abyssinian 
savage are lifted up to freedom by the succes- 



sor of Mohammed. The world, prepossessed 
in our behalf by our early devotion- to the 
rights of human nature, as no nation ever be- 
fore engaged its respect and sympathies, asks, 
in wonder and amazement, what all this de- 
moralization means ? It has an excuse better 
than the world can imagine, better than 
we are generally conscious of ourselves, a vir 
tuous excuse. We have loved not freedom so 
much less, but the Union of our country so 
much more. "We have been made to believe, 
from time to time, that, in a crisis, both of 
these precious institutions could not bo saved 
together, and therefore we have, from time to 
time, surrendered safeguards of freedom to 
propitiate the loyalty of capital, and stay its 
hands from doing violence to the Union. The 
true state of the case, however, ought not to 
be a mystery to ourselves. Prescience, jn- 
deed, is not giveit to statesmen ; but wo are 
without excuse when we foil to apprehend the 
logic of current events. Let parties, or the 
Government, choose or do what they may, 
the people of the United States do not prefer 
wealth to liberty, capital to labor, African 
slaves to white freemen, in the national terri- 
tories and in future States. That question has 
never been distinctly recognized or acted on 
by them. The Republican party embodies 
the popular protest and reaction against a 
policy which has been fastened upon the 
nation by surprise, and which its reason and 
conscience, concurring with the reason and 
conscience of mankind, condemn. 

The choice of the nation is now between 
the Democratic party and the Republican 
party. Its principles and policy are, there- 
fore, justly and even necessarily examined. 
I know of only one policy which it has adopted 
or avowed, namely : the saving of the Terri- 
tories of the United States, if possible, by con- 
stitutional and lawful means, from being homes 
for slavery and polygamy. "Who, that con- 
siders where this nation exists, of what races 
it is composed, in what ago of the world it 
acts its part on the public stage, and what are 
its predominant institutions, customs, habits, 
and sentiments, 'doubts that the Republican 
party can and wi-ll, if unwaveringly faithful to 
that policy, and just and loyal in all beside, 
carry it into triumphal success ? To doubt ie 
to be uncertain whether civilization can im- 
prove or Christianity save mankind. 

I may, perhaps, infer from the necessity of 



8 



the case, that it will, in all courts and places, 
stand by the freedom of speech and of the 
pres<, and the constitutional rights of freemen 
everywhere ; that it will favor the speedy im- 
provement of the public domain by homestead 
laws, and will encourage mining, manufacture 
and internal commerce, with needfnl connec- 
tions between the Atlantic and Pacific States 
— for all these are important interests of free- 
dom. For all the rest, the national emer- 
gencies, not individual influences, must deter- 
mine, as society goes on, tlio policy and 
character of the Republican party. Already 
bearing its part in legislation and in treaties, 
i-t feels the necessity of being practical in its 
care of the national health and life, while it 
leaves metaphysical speculation to those whose 
duty it is to cultivate the ennobling science of 
political philosophy. 

But in the midst of these sabjects, or rather, 
before fully reaching them, tiie Republican 
party encounters unexpectedly, a new and po- 
tential issue — one prior, and therefore para- 
mount to all others, one of national life and 
death. Just as if so much had not been al- 
ready conceded; nay, just as if nothing at 
all had ever been conceded to the interest of 
capital invested in men, we hear menaces of 
disunion, louder, more distinct, more emphatic, 
than ever, with the condition annexed, that 
tliey shall be executed the moment that a Re- 
publican administration, though constitution- 
ally elected, shall assume the Government. 

I do not certainly know that the people are 
prepared to call such an Administration to 
power. I know only, that through a succes- 
sion of floods which never greatly excite, and 
ebbs which never entirely discourage me, the 
volume of Republicanism rises continually 
liigher and higher. They are probably wise, 
vrtose apprehensions admonish them that it is 
already strong enough for eti'ect. 

Hitherto the Republican party has been con- 
tent with one self-interrogatory — how many 
votes it can cast? These threats enforce ano- 
ther — has it determination enough to cast them? 
This latter question touches its spirit and 
pride. I am quite sure, however, that as it has 
hitherto practised self-denial in so many other 
forms, it will in this emergency lay aside all 
impatience of temper, together with all ambi- 
tion, and will consider these extraordinary 
declamations seriously and witli a just modera- 
tion. It would be a waste of words to demon- 



strate that they are unconstitutional, and 
equally idle to show that the respouhibility for 
disunion. attempted or eflfccted, must rest not 
with those who in the exercise of constitu- 
tional authority maintain the Government, but 
with those who unconstitutionally engage in 
the mad Avork of subverting it. 

"What are the excuses for these menaces ? 
They resolve themselves into this, that the 
Republican party in the North is hostile to the 
South. But it already is proved to be a ma- 
jority in the North ; it is therefore practically 
the people of the North. Will it not still be 
the same North that has forborne with you so 
long and conceded to you so much ? Can you 
justly assume that affection which has been 
so complying, can all at once change to hatred 
intense and inexorable ? 

You say that the Republican party is a sec- 
tional one. Is the Democratic party less sec- 
tional ? Is it easier for us to bear your section- 
al sway than for you to bear ours ? Is it un- 
reasonable that for once we should alternate? 
But is the Republican party sectional ? Not 
unless the Democratic party is. The Repub- 
lican party prevails in the House of Represen- 
tatives sometimes ; the Democratic party in 
the Senate always. "Which of the two is the 
most proscriptive ? Come, if you will, into 
the free States, into the State of New York, 
anywhere from Lake Erie to Sag Harbor, 
among my neighbors in the Owasgo Valley, 
hold your conventions, nominate your candi- 
dates, address the people, submit to them, 
fully, earnestly, eloquently, all your complaints 
and grievances of northern disloyalty, oppres- 
sion, perfidy ; keep nothing back, speak just 
as freely and as loudly there as you do here; 
you will have hospitable welcomes, and ap- 
preciating audiences, with ballot-boxes open 
for all the votes you fcan win. Are you less 
sectional than this ? Extend to us the same 
privileges, and I will engage that you will 
very soon have in the South as many Repub- 
licans as we have Democrats in the North. 
There is, however, a better test of nationality 
than the accidental location of parties. Our 
policy of labor in the territories was not sec- 
tional in the first forty years of the Republic, 
Its nature inheres. It will be national again, 
during the third forty years, and forever after- 
wards. It is not wise and beneficent for us 
alone or injurious to you alone. Itseftects are 
eqnal, and the same for us all. 



9 



Ton accnse the Rep«blican party of ulterior 
and secret designs. How can a party that 
counts its votes in this land of free speech and 
free press by the hundreds of thousands, have 
any secret designs ? Who is the conjurer, and 
where are the hidden springs by which he can 
control its uncongregated and widely-dispersed 
masses, and direct them to objects unseen 
and purposes unavowed? But what are these 
hidden purposes ? You name only one. That 
erne is to introduce negro equality among you. 
Suppose we had the power to change your 
social system : what warrant have you for 
supposing that we should carry negro equality 
among you? We know, and wo will show 
you, if you will only give heed, that what our 
system of labor works out, wherever it works 
out anything, is the equality of white men. 
The laborer in the free States, no matter how 
humble his occupation, is a white man, and he 
is politically the equal of his employer. 
Eighteen of our thirty-three States are free- 
labor Statas. There they are : Maine, I^ew 
Hampshire, Massachusetts, Vermont, Rhode 
Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, 
Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Indi- 
ana, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, California, 
and Oregon. I do not array them in contrast 
with the capital States. I am no assailant of 
States. All of the States are parcels of my 
awn country — the best of them not so wise 
and great as I am sure it will hereafter be ; 
the State least developed and perfected among 
them all is wiser and better than any foreign 
state I know. Is it then in any, and in which, 
of the States I have named that negro equal- 
ity oftends the white man's pride ? Through- 
out the wide world, where is the State where 
class and caste are so utterly extinguished as 
tJiey are in each and every one of them ? Let 
tlie European immigrant, who avoids the Af- 
rican as if his skin exhaled contagion, answer. 
You find him always in the State where labor 
is ever free. Did Washington, Jefferson, and 
Henry, when tliey implored you to relinquisli 
your system and accept the one wo have 
adopted, propose to sink you down to the level 
of the African, or was it their desire to exalt 
all white men to a common political eleva- 
tion? 

But we do not seek to force, or even to 
intrude, our system, on you. We are excluded 
justly, wisely, and contentedly, from all poli- 
tical p"wer and responsibility in your capital 



States. You are sovereign on the subject of 
slavery within your own borders, as we are 
on the same subject within our borders. It ia 
well and wisely so arranged. U.<«o your 
authority to maintain what system you please. 
We are not distrustful of the result. We liave 
wisely, as wo think, exercised ours to protect 
and perfect tiio manliood of the members of 
the State. Tlie whole sovereignty upon do- 
mestic concerns within the Union is divided 
between us by unmistakable boundaries. You 
have your fifteen distinct parts ; we eighteea 
parts, equally distinct. Each must be main- 
tained in order that the wliole may be pre- 
served- If ours shall be assailed, within or 
without, by any enemy, or for any cause, 
and we shall have need, we shall expect you 
to defend it. If yours shall be so assailed, in 
the emergency, no matter what the cause or 
the pretext, or who the foe, wo shall defend 
your sovereignty as the equivalent of our own. 
We cannot, indeed, accept your system of 
capital or its ethics. That would bo to sur- 
render and subvert our own, which we esteem 
to be better. Besides, if we could, what need 
for any division into States at all ? You are 
equally at liberty to reject our system and its 
ethics, and to maintain the superiority of your 
own by all the forces of persuasion and argu- 
ment. We must, indeed, mutually discuss 
both systems. All the world discusses all 
systems. Especially must we discuss them 
since we have to decide as a nation wliioh of 
the two wo ought to ingraft on the new and 
future States growing up in the great public 
domain. Discussion then being unavoidable, 
what could be more wise tlian to conduct it 
witli mutual toleration and in a fraternal 
spirit ? 

You complain that Republicans discourse 
too boldly and directly, when tliey express 
with confidence their belief that the system of 
labor will, in the end, be universally accepted 
by tlie capital States, acting for themselves, 
and in conformity with their own constitu- 
tions, while they sanction too unreservedly 
books designed to advocate emancipation. But 
surely you can hardly expect the Federal Gov- 
ernment or the political parties of the nation 
to maintain a censorship of the press or of 
debate. The theory of our system is, tliat 
error of opinion may in all cases safely be 
tolerated where reason is left free to combat 
it. Will it bo claimed that more of modera- 



10 



tion and tondorness in debate are exhibited 
on your side of the great argument than our 
own ? * "We all learned our polemics, as well 
as our principles, from a common master. "We 
are sure that we do not, on our side, exceed his 
lessons and example. Thomas Jefferson ad- 
dressed Dr. Price, an Englishman, concern- 
ing his treatise on emancipation in America, 
iu this fashion: 

" Southward of tte Chesapeake, your book -will 
find but few readers concurring with it in sentiment 
on the subject of slavery. From the month to the 
head of the Chesapeake, the bulk of the people will 
approve it in theory, and it will find a respectable 
minority ready to adopt it in practice ; a minority 
which, for weight, and worth of character, prepond- 
erates against the greater number who have not the 
courage to divest their families of a property which, 
however, keeps their consciences unquiet. North- 
ward of the Chesapeake, you may tind here and 
there an opponent to your doctrine, as you may tind 
here and there a robber or a murderer ; but in no 

greater number." 

''This (Virginia) is the nest State to which we 
may turn our eyes for the interesting spectacle of 
justice in cnnflict with avarice and oppression — a 
conflict where the sacred side is gaining daily new 
recruits from the influx into office of young men, 

grown and growing up." 

" Be not, then, discouraged. What you have written 
will do a great deal of good ; and could you still 
trouble yourself about our welfare, no man is more 
able to hell) the laboring side." 

Ton see, sir, tliat whether we go for or 
against slavery anywhere, we must follow 
southern guides. You may change your pi- 
lots with the winds or the currents ; but we, 
whose nativity, reckoned under the North 
Star, has rendered us somewhat superstitious, 
must be excused for constancy in following the 
guidance of those who framed the national 
ship and gave us the chart for its noble voy- 
age. 

A profound respect and friendly regard for 
the Vice-President of the United States has 
induced me to weigh carefully the testimony 
he has given on the subject of the hostility 
against the South imputed to the Republican 
party, as derived from the relations of the re- 
presentatives of the two parties at this capital. 
He says that ho has seen here in the represen- 
tatives of the lower southern States a most 
resolute and earnest spirit of resistance to the 
Republican party ; that he perceives a sensible 
loss of that spirit of brotherhood and that 
feeling of loyalty, together with that love for 
a common country, which are at last the surest 
cement of the Union ; so that, in the present 
unhappy condition of affairs, he is almost 
tempted to exclaim, that we are dissolving 



week by week and month by month; that 
the threads are gradually fretting them- 
selves asunder ; and a stranger might suppose 
that the Executive of the United States was 
the President of two hostile Eepublics. It is 
not for me to raise a doubt upon the correctness 
of this dark picture, so far as the southern 
groups upon the canvas are concerned, but 
I must be indulged in the opinion that I can 
pronounce as accurately concerning the 
northern or Republican representatives here 
as any one. I know their public haunts and 
their private ways. "We are not a hostile Re- 
public, or representatives of one. We confer 
together, but only as the organs of every 
party do, and must do in a political system 
wliich obliges us to act sometimes as partisans, 
wljjle it requires us always to be patriots and 
statesmen. Differences of opinion, even oa 
the subject of slavery, with us are political, 
not social or personal differences. There is 
not one disunionist or disloyalist among us all. 
We are altogether unconscious of any process 
of dissolution going on among us or around 
us. We have never been more patient, never 
loved the representatives of other sections 
more than now. "We bear the same testimony 
for the people around us here, who, tliougli in 
the very center where the bolt of disunion 
must fall first and be most fearful in its effects, 
seemed Tiever less disturbed tban now. "We 
bear the same testimony for all the districts and 
States we represent. Tlie people of tbe North 
are not enemies, but friends and brethren of 
tlie South, faithful and true as in the days 
wlien death has dealt his arrows promiscuous- 
ly among them on common battle-fields of 
freedom. 

We Avill not suffer ourselves here to dwell 
on any evidences of a different temper in the 
South ; but we shall be content with express- 
ing our belief that hostility that is not de- 
signedly provoked, and that cannot provoke 
retaliation, is an anomaly that must be traced 
to casual excitements, which cannot perpetu- 
ate alienation. 

A canvass for a presidential election, in some 
respects more import.nnt, perhaps, than any 
since 1800, has recently begun. The House 
of Representatives was to be organized by a 
majority, while no party could cast more than 
ft plurality of votes. The gloom of the late 
tragedy in Virginia rested on the Capitol from 
the day when Congress assembled. While the 



11 



two great political parties were peacefully, 
lawfully, and constitutionall}', tliouiiU zeal- 
ously, conducting the great national issue be- 
tween free labor and capital labor for tlie Ter- 
ritories to its proper solution, througli the 
ti-ials of the ballot, operating directly or indi- 
rectly on the various departments of the Gov- 
ernment, a band of exceptional men, contempt- 
uous equally of that great question and of the 
parties to the controversy, and impatient of 
the constitutional system which confines the 
citizens of every State to political action by 
sullrage, in organized parties witliin their 
own borders, inspired by an enthusiasm pecu- 
liar to themselves, and exasperated by griev- 
ances and wrongs tliat som« of them had 
suffered by inroads of armed propagandists 
of slavery in Kansas, unlawful as their 
own retaliation was, attempted to subvert 
slavery in Virginia by conspiracy, am- 
bush, invasion, and force. The method 
we have adopted, of appealing to the reason 
and judgment of the people, to be pronoimced 
by suffrage, is the only one by which free gov- 
ernment can be maintained anywhere, and the 
only one as yet devised which is in harmony 
with the spirit of the Christian religion. 
While generous and charitable natures will 
probably concede that John Brown and his 
associates acted on earnest thougli fatally er- 
roneous convictions, yet all good citizens will 
nevertheless agree, that this attempt to exe- 
cute an unlawful purpose in Vii-ginia by inva- 
sion, involving' servile war, was an act of sed- 
tion and treason, and criminal in just the 
extent that it affected the public peace and was 
destructive of human happiness and human 
life. It is a painful reflection that, after so 
long an experience of the beneficent working 
of our system as we have enjoyed, we have 
had these new illustrations in Kansas and' Vir- 
ginia of the existence among us of a class of 
men so misguided and so desperate as to seek 
to enforce their peculiar principles by the 
sword, drawing after it a need for the further 
illustration by their punishment of that great 
moral truth, especially applicable in a Rei)ub- 
lic, that they who take up the sword as a 
weapon of controversy shall perish by the 
oword. In the latter case, the lamented 
deaths of so many citizens, slain from an am- 
bush and by surprise— all the more lament- 
able because they were innocent victims of a 
frenzy kindled without their agency, in far 



distant fires — the deaths even of the offenders 
themselves, pitiable, although necessary and 
just, because the}' acted under delirium, which 
blinded their judgments to the real nature of 
their criminal enterprise ; the alarm and con- 
sternation naturally awakened througliout the 
country, exciting, for the moment, the fear 
that our whole system, witli all its securities 
for life and liberty, was coining to an end — a 
fear none the more endurable because conti- 
nually aggravated by new chimeras to which 
the great leading event lent an air of prob- 
ability ; surely all these constituted a sum of 
public misery, which ought to have satisfied 
the most morbid appetite for social horrors. 
But, as in the case of the gunpowder plot, 
and the Salem witchcraft, and the New York 
colonial negro plot, so now ; the original 
actors were swiftly followed by anotlier and 
kindred class, who sought to prolong and 
widen the public distress by attempting to 
direct the indignation which it had excited 
against parties guiltless equally of complicity 
and of sympathy with the offenders. 

Posterity will decide in all the recent cases 
where political responsibility for public disas- 
ters must fall; and posterity will give little 
heed to our instructions. It was not until the 
gloomy reign of Domitian had ended, and 
liberty and virtue had found assured refuge 
under the sway of the milder Xerva, that the 
historian arose whose narrative of that period 
of tyranny and terror has been accepted by 
mankind. 

The Republican party being thus vindicated 
against the charge of hostility to the South, 
which has been offered in excuse for the 
menaces of unconstitutional resistance in the 
event of its success, I feel well assured that it 
will sustain me in meeting them in the spirit 
of the defender of the English Common- 
wealth : 

" Snroly they that shall boast as we do to be a 
free nation, and having the power, shall not also 
have the courage to rLMnove, constitutionally, every 
Governor, whether he be the supreme or subordinate, 
may please tiieir fancy with a ridiculous and painted 
freedom, lit to cozen babit-s, l)ut are, indeed, under 
tyranny and servitude, as wantinc; th.at ))ower. which 
is the root and source of all liberty, to dis])ose of and 
ecoMoinize in the land which God hath given theiu, 
as members of family in their own home and free in- 
heritance. Without which natural and essential 
power of a free nation, though bearing high their 
heads, they can, in due esteem, be thought no bet- 
ter than slaves and vassals born in the tenure and 
occupation of another inheriting lord, whose govern- 
ment, though not illegal or intolerable, hangs on 



12 



them as a lordly scourge, not as a free govern- 
ment." 

The RepnLlican party knows, as the whole 
country will ultimately come to understand, 
that the noblest objects of national life must 
perish, if that life shall be lost, and, there- 
fore, it will accept the issue tendered. It will 
take up the word Union, which others are so 
"willing to renounce, and combining it with 
that other glorious thought, Liberty, which 
has been its inspiration so long, it will move 
firmly onward, with the motto inscribed on 
its banner, " Union and Liberty, come what 
may, in victory as in defeat, in power as out 
of power, now and for ever." 

If the Republican party maintain the Union, 
who and what party is to assail it? Only the 
Democratic party, for th«re is no other. "VTill 
the Democratic party take up the assault ? 
The menaces o-f disunion are made, though 
not in its name, yet in its behalf It must 
avow or disavow them. Its silence, thus far, 
is portentous, but is not alarming. The ef- 
fect of the intimidation, if successful, would 
be to continue the rule of the Democratic 
party, though a minority, by terror. It cer- 
tainly ought to need no more than this to 
secure the success of the Republican party. 
If, indeed, the time has come when the Demo- 
cratic party must rule by terror, instead of 
ruling through conceded public confidence, 
then it is quite certain that it cannot be dis- 
missed from power too soon. Ruling on that 
odious principle, it could not long save either 
the Constitution or public liberty. But I 
sliall not believe the Democratic party will 
consent to stand in this position, .though it 
does, through the action of its representatives, 
seem to cover and sustain those who threaten 
disunion. I know the Democracy of the 
North. I know them now in tlieir waning 
strength. I do not know a possible disunion- 
Sst among them all. I believe they will be as 
faithful to the Union now as they were in the 
bygone days when their ranks were full, and 
their challenge to the combat was always the 
war-cry of victory. But, if it shall prove 
otherwise, then the world will all the sooner 
know that every party in this country must 
stand on Union g~ound ; that the American 
people will sustain no party that is not capa- 
ble of making a sacrifice of its ambition on tlie 
altar of the country ; that although a party 
may have never so much of prestige, and 



never such traditional merit, yet, if it be lack- 
ing in the one virtue of loyalty to the Union, 
all its advantages will be unavailing; and 
then obnoxious as, through long-cherished 
and obstinate prejudices, the Republican party 
i.s in the capital States, yet even there it will 
advance like an army with banners, winning 
tlie favor of the wiiole people, and it will be 
armed with the national confidence and sup- 
port, when it shall be found tlie only party 
that defends and maintains the integrity of 
the Union. 

Those who seek to awaken the terrors of 
disunion seem to me to have too hastily con- 
sidered the conditions under which they are 
to make their attempt. Who believes that a 
Republican administration and Congress could 
practice tyranny under a Constitution which 
interposes so many checks as ours ? Yet that 
tyranny must not only be practised, but must 
be intolerable, and there must be no remain- 
ing hope for constitutional relief, before forci- 
ble resistance can find ground to stand on 
anywhere. 

The people of the United States, acting in 
conformity with the Constitution, are the su- 
preme tribunal to try and determine all poli- 
tical issues. They are as comj)etent to decide 
the issues of to-day as they have been hereto- 
fore to decide tl>e iseoes of other days. They 
can reconsider hereafter, and reverse, if need 
be, the judgment they shall pronounce to-day, 
as they have more tlian once reconsidered 
and reversed their judgments in former times. 
It needs no revolution to correct any error, 
or prevent any danger, under any circunv 
stances. 

Nor is any new or special cause for revolu- 
tion likely to occur under a Republican ad- 
ministration. TVe are engaged in no new 
trahsaction, not even in a new drsj)ute. Our 
fathers undertook a great work for themselves, 
for us, and for our successors — to erect a free 
and Federal empire, whose arches shall span 
the North American continent, and reflect the 
rays of the eiin throughout his whole passage 
from the one to the other of the great oceana. 
They erected thirteen of its columns all at 
once. Tliese are rtanding now, tlie admiration 
of mankind. ITieir successors added twenty 
more ; even we who are here have shaped 
and elevated three of tliat twenty, and all 
these are as firm and steadfast as the first 
thirteen; and more will yet be necessary 



13 



when we shall have rested from our labors. 
Some among us prefer for these columns a 
composite material ; others, the pure white 
marble. Our fathers and our predecessors 
differed in the same way, and on the same 
point. "What execrations should we not all 
unite in pronouncing on any statesman who 
heretofore, from mere disappointment and dis- 
gust at being oyerruled in his choice of mate- 
rials for any new cohnnn then to be quarried, 
should have laid violent hands on the imper- 
fect structure and brought it down to the 
earth, there to remain a wreck, instead of a 
citadel of a world's best hopes ! 

I remain now in the opinion I have uni- 
formly expressed here and elsewhere, that 
these hasty threats of disunion are so unnatu- 
ral that they will find no hand to execute 
them. We are of one race, one language, 
liberty, and faith ; engaged, indeed, in varied 
industry ; but even that industry, so diversi- 
fied, brings us into more intimate relations 
with each other than any other people, how- 
ever homogeneous, and though living under a 
consolidated Government, ever maintained. 
"We languish throughout, if one joint of our 
Federal frame is smitten ; while it is certain 
that a part dissevered must perish. You may 
refine as you please about the structure of the 
Government, and say that it is a compact, and 
that a breach, by one of the States or by Con- 
gress, of any one article, absolves all the mem- 
bers from allegiance, and that the States may 
separate when they have, or fancy they have, 
cause for war. But once try to subvert it, 
and you will find that it is a Government of 
the whole people — as individuals, as well as a 
compact of States.; that every individual 
member of the body-politic is conscious of 
his interest and power in it, and knows 
that ho will be helpless, powerless, hope- 
less, when it shall have gone down. Man- 
kind have a natural right, a natural instinct, 
and a natural capacity for self-government; 
and when, as here, they are sufficiently 
ripened bj culture, they will and must have 
self-government, and no other. The framers 
of our Constitution, with a wisdom that sur- 
passed all previous understanding among men, 
adapted it to tliese inherent elements of hu- 
man nature. lie strangely, blindly misunder- 
stands the anatomy of the great system who 
thinks that its only bonds, or evea its strongest 
ligaments, are the written cor.pact or even 



the multiplied and thoroughly ramified roads 
and thoroughfares of trade, commerce, and 
social intercourse. These are strong indeed, 
but its chiefest instruments of cohesion — those 
which render it inseparable and indivisible — 
are the millions of fibres of millions of con- 
tented, happy human hearts, binding by their 
affections, their ambitions, and their best 
hopes equally the high and the low, the rich 
and the poor, the wise and unwise, the learned 
and the untutored, even the good and the bad, 
to a Government, the first, the last, and the 
only such one that has ever existed, which 
takes equal heed always of their wants, their 
wishes, and their opinions; and appeals to 
them all, individually, once in a year, or in 
two years, or at least in four years, for their 
expressed consent and renewal, without which 
it must cease. No, go where you will, and to 
what class you may, with commissions for 
your fatal service in one hand, and your bounty 
counted by the hundred or the thousand 
pieces of silver in the other, a thousand re- 
sisters will rise up for every recruit you can 
engage. On the banks equally of the St. Law- 
rence and of the Rio Grande, on the Atlantic 
and the Pacific coasts, on the shores of the 
Gulf of Mexico and in the dells of tlie Rocky 
Mountains, among the fishermen on the banks 
of Newfoundland, the weavers and spinners 
of Massachusetts, the stevedores of New York, 
the miners of Pennsylvania, Pike's Peak, and 
California, the wheat-growers of Indiana, tho 
cotton and the sugar planters on the Missis- 
sippi, among the voluntary citizens from every 
other land, not less than the native born, the 
Christian and the Jew, among the Indians on 
the prairies, the contumacious Mormons in 
Deseret, the Africans free, the Africans in 
bondage, the inmates of hospitals and alms- 
houses, and even the criminals in the pe- 
nitentiaries, rehearse tho story of yonr 
wrongs and their own, never so eloquently 
and never so mournfully, and appeal to them 
to rise. They will ask you, "Is tliis all ?" 
"Are you more just than Washington, wiser 
than Hamilton, more humane than Jefferson ?" 
" What new form of government or of union 
have you the power to establish, or even the 
cunning to devise, that will be more just, more 
safe, more free, more gentle, more beneficent, 
or more glorious than this ?" And by these 
simple interrogatories you will be silenced 
and confounded. 



14 



Mr. President, we are perpetually forgetting 
this subtle and complex, yet obvious and na- 
tural mechanism of our Constitution ; and be- 
cause we do forget it, we are continually won- 
dering how it is that a confederacy of thirty 
and more States, covering regions so vast, and 
regulating interests so various of so many mil- 
lions of men, constituted and conditioned so 
diversely, works right on. We are continual- 
ly looking to see it stop and stand still, or fall 
suddenly into pieces. But, in truth, it will 
not stop ; it cannot stop ; it was made not to 
etop, but to keep in motion — in motion al- 
ways, and without force. For my own part, 
as tljis wonderful machine, vphen it had newly 
come from the hands of its almost divine in- 
ventors, was the admiration of my earlier 
years, although it was then but imperfectly 
known abroad, so now, when it forms the cen- 
tral figure in the economy of the world's civi- 
lization, and the best sympathies of mankind 
favor its continuance, I expect that it will 
stand and work right on until men shall fear 
its failure no more than wc now apprehend 
that the sun will cease to hold his eternal 
place in tlie heavens. 

Nevertheless, I do not expect to see this 
purely popular though majestic system always 
working on unattended by the presence and 
exhibition of human temper and human pas- 



sions. That would be to expect to enjoy re- 
wards, benefits, and blessings, without labor, 
care, and watchfulness — an expectation con- 
trary to divine appointment. These are the 
discipline of the American citizen, and he 
must inure himself to it. When, as now, a 
great policy, fastened upon the country 
through its doubts and fears, confirmed by its 
habits, and strengthened by personal interests 
and ambitions, is to be relaxed and changed, 
in order that tbe nation may have its just and 
natural, and free developments, then, indeed, 
all the winds of controversy are let loose upon 
us from all points of the political compass, we 
see objects and men only througli mazes, 
mists, and doubtful and lurid liglits. The 
earth seems to be heaving under our feet, and 
the pillars of the noble fabric that protects us 
to be trembling before our eyes. But the ap- 
pointed end of all this agitation comes at last, 
and always seasonably; the tumults of tlie 
people subside ; the country becomes calm 
once more ; and then we find that only onr 
senses have been disturbed, and that they 
have betrayed us. The earth is firm as al- 
ways before, and the wonderful structure, for 
whose safety we have feared so anxiously, 
now more firmly fixed than ever, still stands 
unmoved, enduring and immovable. 



THE TRIBUNE ALMANAC FOR 1860. 



SIXTH EDITIOiT KOW BEADY. 



COISTTEjSTTS. 

OCCULTATIOXS. 



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No. 1. 

THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT. 

It contains the famous speech of Mr. Seward at Rochester, in which he pointed out the fact of the Irrepressible Con- 
flict ; the equally famous speech of Mr. O'Conor at the Academy of Music, contendinR that Negro jflavery is not unjust ; 
Mr. O'Connor's recent Letter to certain New York merchants on the same subject ; and a brief collection of the oplniona 
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No. 2. 

DEMOCRATIC LEADERS FOR DISUNION. 

The recent powerful speech of Senator Wilson of Massachusetts, in which the fact ia demonstrated tliat the Disunion 
Movement, be?an thirty years ago by Mr. Calhoun, has at last obtained the control of all tlie most influenlial leaders of 
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THE ADMISSION OF KANSAS. 

This Tract contains the powerful Speech of Senator Skward, of New Yorlv, delivore<l in the Senate on 'Wednesday, 
Feb. 29, 1S60 ; when, in pursuance of special order, was taken up the bill introduced by Mr. Seward, on the '22d inst., to 
admit the State of Kansas into the Union, under the Constitution framed, and with the Boundaries prescribed, by the 
Convention which assembled at Wyandot in July last. 



No. 4. 

NATIONAL POLITICS. 

This Tract contains the brilliant Speech of AnaAnAM Lincoln, of Illinois, the great antagonist of Senator Douglaa, 
delivered at the Cooper Institute, on Monday evening, Feb. 27, 1S60, and which waa listened to with marked approval and 
profound attention by many of thj leading men of the country. 

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SIXTH EDITJOK NOW HEADY. 

THE CASE OF DRED SCOTT: 

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X.~The Dinseniing Opinion (in full) of Justice Curtis ; 
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